Main Seminar: Panel on the 2026 Elections in Brazil
PLEASE NOTE THIS SESSION WILL HAVE AN EARLY START
Convener(s): Felipe Krause, Brazilian Studies Programme
Speaker(s): Tim Power, University of Oxford; Malu Gatto, University College London; and Saul Tourinho Leal, TLDA Advocacia; Mariana Borges Martin da Silva, University of Southampton
Source: Poder360
Tim Power is a comparative political scientist with a deep commitment to interdisciplinary area studies. Currently Head of the Social Sciences Division, Tim arrived in Oxford in 2005 to take up a joint appointment in Area Studies and the Department of Politics. From 2008 to 2012 he directed the Latin American Centre, and he became Head of the Oxford School of Global and Area Studies (OSGA) in 2018. Tim's research concerns democratization and political institutions (parties, legislatures, and elections) in modern Latin America, especially Brazil. With Cesar Zucco (Fundacao Getulio Vargas), and also co-directs the Brazilian Legislative Surveys, which have recorded the opinions of Brazilian politicians in every parliament elected since 1990. Tim has been working with several colleagues on the challenges of coalition government in presidential systems.
Malu Gatto is Associate Professor of Latin American Politics at the Institute of the Americas at University College London (UCL), where she also serves as Deputy Head of Department and Vice-Dean for Advancement & Alumni for the Faculty of Social and Historical Sciences. Her work explores questions about political behaviour, representation, policymaking, and gender and politics with a regional focus on Latin America, especially Brazil, and has been published in various outlets, including Comparative Political Studies, the British Journal of Political Science, Party Politics and Politics & Gender. She is the author of Resistance to Gender Quotas in Latin America, published in 2025 by Oxford University Press. She has a DPhil from the University of Oxford and has previously been a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Zurich, a Visiting Fellow at the Kellogg Institute for International Studies at the University of Notre Dame, and a Global Fellow at the Woodrow Wilson Center for International Scholars.
Saul Tourinho Leal is a leading Brazilian constitutional lawyer, who has also advised the Constitutional Court of South Africa and the Supreme Court of Israel. He holds a PhD in Constitutional Law from The Humboldt University of Berlin.
Mariana Borges Martins da Silva is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in Politics at the University of Southampton, where she directs the Centre for Political Ethnography (CPE). She is the convener of the Latin American Politics Specialist Group of the Political Studies Association (PSA). Before joining Southampton, she was a Postdoctoral Prize Research Fellow in Politics at Nuffield College, University of Oxford. Her research examines how culture shapes political behavior, public opinion, elections, representation, and the circulation of misinformation, with a particular focus on Brazil.
